Consigned to insalubrious lodgings among the backstreets of Bethnal Green, Hester now counts “foglers, lifters and murderers” among her neighbours. Orphaned at 11, and lacking better prospects, she has been taken in by the family of his former gardener.
Raised in a parsonage in the Lincolnshire Wolds, she would listen raptly when her father returned from his travels, imagining a wonderland of “wherries and steamers”, where one might “take a seat on Shillibeer’s omnibus…stopping at The Unicorn for beefsteak with oyster sauce”.īut Hester’s father, by the time we encounter her, is long dead, and her childish illusions have been abandoned.
Do you think you know London? Hester White, who narrates Laura Carlin’s debut novel, confronts us first with this question. Something is lurking in the black heart of their city, and it is more depraved than either of them could ever imagine. But both she and Rebekah are lured into the most sinister of investigations as whispers from Hester's old life return to poison the present. Out of these shadows comes Hester White, a young woman who is desperate to escape the slums by any means possible.When Hester is thrust into the world of the aristocratic Brock family, she leaps at the chance to improve her station in life under the tutelage of the mysterious Rebekah Brock. The year is 1831.Down murky alleyways and in filthy hovels, acts of unspeakable wickedness take place and vulnerable people begin to disappear from the streets. The Wicked Cometh will take readers on a heart-racing journey through backstreets swathed with fog to richly curtained, brightly lit country houses from the libraries and colleges of gentlemen, to sawdust-strewn gin palaces where ne'er-do-wells drink and scheme, all told through the eyes of a heroine with nothing to lose. A debut historical novel that will appeal to fans of Sarah Waters and The Essex Serpent. Even in the darkest of times, you cannot bury the truth.
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